


Hurts

by writeforyou



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon Compliant, Kink Meme, Pain, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 07:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2684897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeforyou/pseuds/writeforyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a choice, Cole is more human. And with humanity, comes growth. And with growth, there can be pain.</p>
<p>AKA Cole deals with feeling his own pain strongly when he becomes more human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurts

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Dragon Age fic but I really wanted to write something, and I thought this would be a cute first start.
> 
>  
> 
> **WARNING FOR SPOILERS, SPECIFICALLY COLE'S QUEST LINE**
> 
>  
> 
> Written for [this](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/10859.html?thread=45702251#t45702251) prompt on the Dragon Age Kink Meme

 

 

Pain was relative, Cole found. It was something that you could sympathise with, empathise at times, and feel more often than not. He understood those concepts, knew what it was like for everyone else. For him though, it was different. It had been since he had reached out to touch the hand of the suffering.

He felt things with others, emotions that weren’t his own. He would walk down the courtyard at Skyhold, unseen to most eyes, except for the few, the few he choose, and faces would be blurred with a story of something so strong that it resonated. He didn’t understand why it happened, but it felt like it was how it should be, so he did not worry. At first, he had lived with it, with other too loud, too persistent, enough for him to drown in.  And then he helped, just like he did before. He offered words he knew would be comforting, gave himself as many second chances as he could manage just to get it right. There was nothing better than that feeling of lightness before the weight of another settled back in.

There was a lot of it at Skyhold. A lot of suffering, a lot of fear, a lot of worry. He had wondered, back when he first arrived, what it was like to feel all of that at once and have it be entirely his own. He had wondered how the Inquisitor stood as she did, commanded as she did, even with all the responsibility that made her legs threaten to buckle or the threat that scared her more often than not.  He wondered, but he doubted that he would ever truly know.

Until he did. Cole had wanted to stay so badly, felt okay within the walls of the stronghold. He would have bound himself gladly, if only Solas had agreed, and it was probably the first time he felt something that could truly be described as fear for a long time, when it didn’t work. But the Inquisitor had helped, in a way that no other being – human, elf, dwarf or other – had ever granted him. Or perhaps, he had let them grant him.

Sol Cadash gave him back his humanity. And it _hurt_.

He had been injured in battle before – on many occasions, in fact – but none of it had felt like this.

It was all consuming, burning, aching. It made his eyes water and his entire body shake. His ears were ringing and somewhere beyond that, there was cries. It took him a long time to realise those were his own.

Was it always like this? Cole asked himself. How do people live like this?

A gentle hand rested on his forehead, felt the pin pricks, electrical pulses that were not entirely of this world – the Inquisitor. There was low mumbling, a voice of reassurance, and then a bitten order. Definitely the Inquisitor.

Next to his own torture, there was her worry. He was scaring her, but not in the way that he expected he would and Cole felt guilt for causing it. He tried to breathe, remembered that was what some did when they tried to regain control of their functions once more, but the expansion of his chest cavity just pulled at the wound and it stung.

“No, no, hey, let’s not do that, okay,” her words were cooed, supposed to be soothing. She wanted to help. “I know, I know, but you just need to hang on for a little while longer, okay?” Her voice trailed off into an angry mutter, something that he couldn’t hear, but he knew that it was something about Vivienne. She would not heal him. Cole thought he could understand that.

“…remove the blade,” another voice, calmer, more in control, firm, concerned but not showing it – Varric, Cole knew, his friend, he had said it was okay to call him that.

She held his hand when it was pulled out, brushed back his hair when he cried. He tried not to, but it was the worst kind of relief. There were bandages, Cole felt them; the coarseness of the fabric and the way that his body was lifted just off the ground to make sure they were secure.

He didn’t remember much after that. He was adrift, lost in waves much too high and too strong for him to overpower. In those moments, Cole regretted his humanity. Because who would want something that could bring this much agony? But then numbness greeted him, a shadow that he was all too familiar with.

Cole was told that the Inquisitor carried him back their main camp in the Empire Du Lion.

“It was impressive,” Varric retold with all the embroideries that Cole had learnt were stretches of the truth, “She almost bit the hand off Bull when he tried to help her.”

Cole had carefully replied, “I would have liked to see that,” and Varric smiled approvingly.

Dorian was the one that healed him, along with the help of some strong healing poultices. “You see, healing isn’t really my strong suit,” he had explained carefully. He acted like he was forced on the fire, but Cole knew his eyes drifted to the bandages that were still around him every once and a while, as if to be sure.

Cole had said thank you, because he felt that was what he needed to do, although he wasn’t surprised when Dorian brushed away the words with a laugh and a statement that he did so hate soppy moments. Cole knew that wasn’t necessarily true, but he also knew that it was considered rude to point such a thing out.

The Inquisitor insisted that they wait until Cole was okay to walk. There was some objection, but Sol was firm in her orders, not to be diverted. He felt warm, knowing that she did it for him.

She sat with him in the evenings, checked his bandages and smiled when she told him that he would have one hell of a battle scar. He laughed because that was what she wanted him to do.

Sol had battle scars too. Cole knew the stories behind them, even though she hadn’t told him. There were burns where dragons had come too close; on her shoulder, there had been an arrow imbedded during a fight against the Red Templars; she had been stabbed in the gut by a client when a deal went wrong. Her nose had been broken during a bar brawl in Nevarra, and the scar that left a crooked trail from one side of her neck to the other told of darker stories.

He touched it one night, had interrupted just to touch the raised flesh. It felt like his own, jagged and uncomfortable. It made her uncomfortable, although she didn’t say anything, just stilled and let it happen, and Cole lowered his hand back into his lap with an apology on his lips.

“It still hurts,” he reminded her.

Sol nodded. “Sometimes.”

“But it’s an old wound.”

“It is.”

He didn’t ask why it would still hurt. He knew that it would.

Instead, he asked, “Will mine?”

“Maybe.”

Cole frowned. “I don’t like getting hurt.”

She tittered a laugh. “No, not many people do. But it happens. And not all of them hurt like this.”

Cole took her words and held them. It felt strange, for him to have to learn all these things again, familiar and yet achingly not. The things that make you real, that make you alive. Cole wondered if that meant that, up until now, he had only been merely existing. He was sure that was something he could ask Solas about.

The next time, he ran head first into the battle and slashed. Sera grumbled about how she wanted to get there first when the reanimated dead collapsed into a pile of rotting limbs. Cassandra said nothing, but slammed her shield into the face of an approaching enemy. The Inquisitor reminded him to aim for their heads.

He was slashed, of course, just as he had expected he would be. Nothing like the first, nothing so overbearing that it left him feeling weak and desperate for less. He stared at the gash on his shoulder, blood smeared across skin and staining the torn fabric of his tunic.

“It stings,” Cole grinned a little.

“I told you that you should have worn the armour,” Cassandra scolded him.

But he shook his head. “No, it’s a good sting.”

It was clear that none of them, not even the Inquisitor, understood what he meant. But that was fine. He did.

 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [caadash](http://gladers.co.vu)
> 
> Comments and criticism welcomed!


End file.
